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Theater Life Is a Dream
By BILL CAIN
Two thousand years ago, some brave
soul scratched the rough image of a fish into a cave wall and had the nerve to
say, This means Christ. The magnificent Christ of
Michelangelos Pieta is an infinitely more refined piece of
carving, but as far as sheer artistic courage goes, that little fish is hard to
beat.
Creating new images of God is risky business. No one knew that
better than Jesus, who paid the ultimate price for a lifetime of creating such
images. But the need to speak the unspeakable in the limited language of
ones own time endures, and despite the risks, the necessary images are
found.
I saw one created the other night, and it took my breath away. And
until I saw it, I didnt realize I had been looking for it my entire
life.
It occurred during a rare staging of a dusty, long-ignored,
previously untranslated 1687 Spanish liturgical drama, Life Is a
Dream. Originally produced by Marquette University, the production was
invited to New York by Jay Wegman, canon for arts at the Cathedral of St. John
the Divine, where this Dream played its all-too-brief run in the
main sanctuary.
Life Is a Dream is a liturgical allegory, and it comes
with all the tired baggage of allegory, including a cast list right out of a
grammar school pageant. Sharing the stage with God in this retelling of the
fall and redemption are Man, Free Will, Understanding, Grace, the Prince of
Darkness and the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water.
A Dream in the cathedral
On the face of it, it sounds like a long, if edifying, evening.
But as written by Calderón de la Barca (Spains Shakespeare and a
Franciscan priest), directed by Jesuit Fr. George Drance and lovingly performed
by a remarkable cast of Marquette University students, this production more
than shakes the dust off this Dream. It carries us deep into
Gods infinite love for poor, fallible Man, whose first appearance -
nearly naked and looking exceedingly vulnerable in the vast vault of the
darkened cathedral - is only one of the many heart-opening images of this
endlessly surprising production.
Man (Brian Sheridan) travels a long journey, transforming from
charming innocent (What sounds I hear
if this is hearing?
are his first words) to brutal tyrant (No one oppose my fury or all will
tremble at my fury!). His blind vanity leads him to eat the apple (no Eve
to blame in this version) and become enchained by the Prince of Darkness and
his Jungian sidekick, Shadow. Only the intervention of God, who becomes human
and takes on Mans chains, can save him.
This deeply traditional story is told with extensive use of
puppets - a stately trinity of larger-than-life icons for God and a very funny,
much smaller-than-life wise guy for the Prince of Darkness - supplementing an
engaging young cast that tells us the story as if for the very first time.
The major revelation of the evening comes when Man, profoundly
grateful for his redemption, slowly kneels in adoration before his God. This
act, tremendously moving in itself, is made doubly so, for when Man faces God
in this production, he is facing a woman.
Solving an ancient riddle
I have known since fifth grade that committing to a male/female
relationship in the Catholic tradition meant entering into a sort of
second-class citizenship. The catechism with its matching pictures of a man and
a woman getting married (labeled, This is good) and men and
women taking religious vows (labeled, This is better) made
that abundantly clear. And then there was the gospel itself, which even a child
can see is mostly a male-dominated story. Mary and Mary Magdalene, though
wonderful roles in any passion play, are both largely non-speaking parts, while
Jesus and the apostles have all the good lines. By the time I grew up, knowing
that most attempts to add gender balance to the tradition seem forced (for
example, female crucifixion sculptures) and knowing that The Last
Temptation of Christ is, after all, only a temptation, I had resigned
myself to living with this imbalance.
And then some brave soul comes along, carves a fish in a wall and
suddenly I am seeing the unimaginable. A man and a woman face each other and
symbolize in their persons, in their bodies, the essence of the mystery of
redemption - not as a stunt, not as argument or polemic, but as the necessary
and effortless result of all the rigorously traditional material that had come
before.
The key to this miraculous moment is the fact that Life Is a
Dream is not a passion play, not a reenactment of actual events. It is an
allegory - a kind of poetic theology largely abandoned with the advent of
modern scriptural scholarship. Calderón based his Dream on
St. Ignatius of Loyolas contemplation of the incarnation in his
Spiritual Exercises, which in turn is based on Ludolph of Saxonys
meditation in which God, with the aid of the allegorical figures of Truth,
Peace, Justice and Mercy, considers the creation of Man.
In Calderóns play, the dialogue takes place among the
divine attributes of Power, Wisdom and Love. Since it is Wisdom who volunteers
to become human to effect the salvation of Man - Wisdom who is one of the few
female personifications of God in our tradition - it is entirely fitting that
it is an actress who steps out of the body of the majestic Wisdom puppet to
become Wisdoms human incarnation. Monica West, the gifted young actress
who plays Wisdom, makes the distinction clear when she says of her role,
Im not playing Jesus, but I am playing the part of God who came
down to save Man. Because the language of allegory has been so
well-established from the start, we no more confuse Divine Wisdom with the
historical Jesus than John the Baptist was confusing Christ with livestock when
he announced the arrival of the Lamb of God.
Yet there she stands, a stunning image of God, not as an invader
from some foreign tradition, but as a presence that has always been within our
own, patiently waiting for someone to recognize her. With this production, her
moment has come.
To see Man and God facing each other in the persons of Sheridan
and West is to feel yourself in the presence of the solution of an ancient
riddle. For once, man and woman are no longer defined by the bickering of Adam
and Eve. For once, all proclamations about the importance of women are
embodied. For once, the loving relationship between man and woman seems an
essential component in the story of our salvation. It is a necessary image, and
its power is overwhelming.
When I asked Sheridan what was the hardest part of the
performance, he answered with a laugh, Is there a part that
isnt hard? Then he amended his answer to say that one part
that comes effortlessly is the moment when Man faces the human form of Wisdom.
Having all that power come to you, toward you, you almost have to back
up. When I ask whose power - Wests or Wisdoms - he paused and
said, Both.
Trying not to fall over
One reason this production is so persuasive is that it makes no
effort to persuade. When director George Drance describes the goal of his work,
he doesnt talk about gender roles, liberation theology, creation
spirituality or any other of the modern issues the finished work addresses. He
speaks simply and unpretentiously about forgiveness and the love of God,
especially in the context of Ignatius Spiritual Exercises. Drance
first made the 30-day form of the Exercises some 15 years ago as a
21-year-old novice in St. Paul, Minn. Walking by a stream after the
overwhelming Contemplation to Attain Divine Love, Drance jumped into the water
and stood under a waterfall. Standing there in the semi-polluted run-off
to the Mississippi, I felt the universe come alive, Drance said. I
could see how simple it all was. I could see the source. The truth was that God
loves us.
The same openness and lack of pretension inform the acting in the
production. When I asked Sheridan what he was thinking and feeling during
Mans perfect gesture of adoration, he said, Im trying to do
what George asked. Im counting to 25 and trying not to fall
over.
As I watched the play night after night, I was reminded of the
best of the church of my childhood, when nightly devotions allowed us to slip
easily into the mystery of God and experience all that was old as new again.
Life Is a Dream does all of that and perhaps more wondrously, it
makes all that seems so new, even revolutionary, feel old again, rooted deep in
the very best of our tradition.
It is my hope that other churches, cathedrals and universities
around the country (and beyond) will follow the lead of the Cathedral of John
the Divine and open their doors to this production. Certainly more than the
privileged few who saw it there should have the chance to experience the final
sequence - when Man, restored to grace after Wisdoms sacrifice, is left
alone in the sanctuary of the cathedral. No longer the wide-eyed innocent he
was at the beginning of the evening, he turns to the high sanctuary where he
sees the huge cross of Christ in majesty that hangs above the main altar. He
kneels reverently, and after a long period of silent adoration, quietly exits,
leaving us in the presence of God, in whose heart we have been living for the
past two hours. It is another stunning moment. What response can we make?
Personally, I found myself counting to 25 and trying not to fall
over.
Bill Cain was co-creator and head writer of the Peabody
Award-winning TV series Nothing Sacred. He is a priest of the New
York province of the Society of Jesus.
National Catholic Reporter, July 28,
2000
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